DG.O 2004: Studying eVoting

Paul Herrnson, from the University of Maryland is speaking on
his research into eVoting machines. Paul's work is interesting to
me because he is evaluating actual voting machines. In order to get
access, he's been pretty careful about his participation in eVoting
debates.

Electronic voting prevents invalid ballots and provides instant
election results. There are also disadvantages: digital divide
issues, power failures, and trustworthiness. The most knowledgeable
people are the least suspicious.

Do we want a paper record? It improves voter confidence, but
adds cost and complexity. There are also accessibility issues with
paper ballots.

There are ballot design variations. One theme is to organize the
ballot by office. Another theme is to organize it by party row.
There are also straight party mechanisms in some ballots.

The research objective was to develop general principals from
laboratory test, field test, and natural experiments. They used
three types of test: expert review, usability tests, and natural
experiments.

Experts looked at the quality of ballots, instructions, help
commands, ease of navigation, feedback on under and over voting,
ease of inserting voting cards, and the adequacy of review
mechanisms.

In usability tests, users try the machines while being video
taped and talking aloud about their intentions. These are reviewed
and compared with the actual results and users are also interviewed
about their reaction.

In field test, users are timed reading the instructions, and
their responses to voting machine actions are noted. A post-voting
questionnaire is also given to some voters.

Natural experiments are used to access impact of the new voter
interfaces and procedures on spoiled ballots, residual votes,
roll-off, split-tickets, and turnout. They also analyze the impact
of variations in technology, ballot formats, and procedures among
states.

The anticipated accomplishments are comparative evaluations of
voting machines, ballot designs, and combinations of machines and
ballots. The study hopes to develop principals to guide the design
of voting machines and ballot design.